


Softly, Softly

by Merixcil



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Sequel Trilogy
Genre: Agency issues, Canon Compliant, F/M, Force Bond (Star Wars), Gen, Identity Issues, Mind Manipulation, NPC Death, Non-Explicit Sex, Post-TLJ, War, background finnrose - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-02-07
Updated: 2020-02-07
Packaged: 2021-02-28 00:20:02
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 12,899
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22604602
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Merixcil/pseuds/Merixcil
Summary: When the Resistance start to pick up distress calls from defecting Stormtroopers, they move to save as many as they can. It doesn't occur to them that the First Order might be after the same renegades until they're right on top of them.
Relationships: Rey/Ben Solo | Kylo Ren
Comments: 11
Kudos: 22
Collections: For one is both and both are one in love: The Reylo Fanfiction Anthology's Valentine's Day Exchange





	Softly, Softly

**Author's Note:**

  * For [lucymonster](https://archiveofourown.org/users/lucymonster/gifts).



> Hello there fic-receiver! I really loved all your prompts and it sounds like we're into the same sorts of thing when it comes to fic. Ideally I would have had a year to put together a 100k opus for any of them, so apologies that this doesn't manage to be quite that long, but happy Valentine's and I hope you enjoy. 
> 
> This is set post-TLJ but pre-ROS and should all be canon compliant. 
> 
> One quick note: He'll always be Ben Organa to me
> 
> One other quick note: I had the plot for this in place and mostly written BEFORE Trevorrow's script overview leaked

Whoever designed the YT freighter series had never run cargo in their life. The access ramp wasn’t study enough to bring anything heavier than one standard block of transport crates through at a time and once on board, cargo had to be separated out to fit into the cramped storage areas. More of the _Millennium Falcon’s_ available space was dedicated to creature comforts than freighting, one of the few aspects of the ship that hadn’t been rehashed half a dozen times by Han Solo.

The argument went that the YT series had been designed with smugglers in mind. Rey had always thought that sounded like a trap: design a ship for smugglers and that makes it very easy for the authorities to track down who’s moving product, but by all accounts the Empire at the very least had kept it’s nose out of the black market pipelines and left their management to the Hutts.

Leaning back in the dejarik booth, Rey yawned loudly, picking at the fraying edges of the upholstery which was in dire need of replacement. She loved this ship, as one could only love the first ship they ever owned, but sometimes it felt more like a laundry list of broken parts and bad wiring than her own personal gateway to the stars. What’s more, she was still finding new quirks in protocols the _Millenium Falcon_ ran to keep itself skybound. Han Solo had had decades to get it working just how he liked it and here she was playing catch up on a race across the Galaxy.

The blue glow of hyperspace trickled into the living quarters from the cockpit. It should have been easy enough for Rey to catch up on the rest she was sorely lacking while they were cruising, and here she was fighting sleep and thinking about sewing headrest cushions. Whilst it made it much harder for the First Order to find them in the first place, having five ships between them meant that if any of the Resistance were found, it would be a dire emergency and they had spent the past four days skirting the attention of the authorities, making fuel stops as quickly as they could until they built up the reserves to slip into hyperspace. It hadn’t left much time for proper rest, and now they were all taking turns to put themselves back together.

There were four of them on board. Rey as pilot, Rose as Mechanic, Chewie as muscle and co-pilot and Finn playing diplomat. At first Rey had been sceptical about bringing Rose with them, but decided that getting to know someone so important to Finn could hardly be a bad thing, especially when she was so brilliant with machines.

Rey hadn’t anticipated the nature of Finn and Rose’s relationship though. Back on Jakku, she’d sometimes had reason to head east of Niima Outpost towards Dunlip, well known in the sector as a brothel town. Walking the streets there had been a trial by fire, and not just because of how many travellers Rey had to turn away who assumed she was available for hire. The sounds that came from the tents of Dunlip were terrifying and intriguing in equal measure, raising Rey’s hackles and pushing her eyes down towards her feet.

The same sounds had been coming from the two-person berth Finn and Rose had taken up residence in twice a day since they left the Resistance. Chewy thought it hilarious, Rey was having trouble looking Finn in the eye. She didn’t know how he and Rose had the energy for it, not on top of everything else.

It was easier with Rose, having not already built an impression of her to fall back on, but hearing Finn engage with someone else like _that_ had Rey thinking about the boy she met on Jakku who had taken her hand and refused to let go and had asked as they pulled away from the planet if she had a boyfriend. She hadn’t realised she was expecting him to wait for her until she saw him taking up with someone else.

The creaks and groans from behind the closed door grew louder. Rey contemplated heading into the bunk room on the other side of the ship, but she’d still be thinking about the movement of warm bodies, mouths and hands linking with each other, the building tension between two people, the horrible shock of seeing someone stripped down and vulnerable.

Rey shook her head, no time for any of that. When the war was over, there would be time. For now all she had to do was keep her eyes on the here and now.

A hand on her thigh, creeping upwards. Rey watched the fingers press down hard, leaving indents in the skin that vanished along with the pressure. The sensitive spot below her crotch crackled with electricity, waiting for friction and all the excitement that followed.

“Rey.”

In the haze of space between sleep and wakefulness, she couldn’t say if her mind was playing tricks on her or if she really wasn’t alone. She spread her legs wider in invitation, watching the hand and the endless nothing of the Force beyond.

“Rey!”

A hand shaking her shoulder, and Rey snapped forward into the waking world to find Rose looming over the dejarik table, half a laugh left on her face.

The dream vanished in an instant, leaving Rey on the edge of the bench with her legs spread wide. She stretched, reaching for it to come back to her and bring her body come back to life. “What’s going on?”

“We’ve picked up a beacon from Chandilla. A group of defectors asking for an assist.”

“Chandrilla?” Rey frowned, still half a sleep as she dragged herself to her feet and starting moving towards the cockpit, where Chewie was already adjusting their tracking computer and re-centring the nav-comm. “Is it safe for us to be headed to the Core?”

“All our intel says that the First Order haven’t made it out of Coruscant, we should be fine.” Rose replied, leaving up against the doorway to the cockpit.

Rey looked between Chewie and Rose. The wookie shrugged like he couldn’t care less how likely they were to get ambushed. “Chandrilla’s hardly difficult to get to from Coruscant.”

“We’ll be fine.” Rose said, firmly. “But the sooner we’re in the sooner we’re out. So let’s get moving.”

“You said they wanted assistance.” Rey protested, already flicking through controls to re-calibrate the sensors to deal with the higher than average volume of space debris around the Core. “We don’t even know if they’ll want to join us.”

“Rey.”

“I just think we would be better off putting our energies into bringing in new recruits.” Rey turned to Chewie who treacherously didn’t so much as glance up from reprogramming the hyper-drive.

“And the Resistance’s position is that we will help anyone trying to leave the First Order. Every successful defection is a point against them.” Rose replied. “Besides, Finn’s already approved the mission and he outranks both of us.”

“He doesn’t outrank Chewie.”

Rose snorted, backing up towards her sleeping quarters. “As if Chewie’s gonna pull rank on us.”

Chewie sent her packing with a half-hearted roar that didn’t so much counter Rose’s point as prove it. Rey turned back towards the controls and got to work. If she really wasn’t happy with the direction they were taking, she wasn’t sure Finn would overrule her, but she was reluctant to find out how readily he would order her around if given half the chance. It had been a shock to her when General Dameron promoted him to Captain. To her, and no one else.

When her and Chewie were done, Rey debated the merits of staying in the pilot’s seat versus trying to squeeze in a few hour’s sleep before they made planetfall. She could go and bother Finn. Evidently he was awake enough to be giving orders but not so awake that he could show his face. She rubbed the heals of her hands into her eyes and let out a rushed groan of frustration, remembering how easy it had been to control her sleep schedule on Jakku. She missed waking up without an alarm and napping when she wanted to. It was all so much harder without the regular rise and fall of a sun to judge it by.

Chewie nudged her in the side with a heavy paw, chirruping to show his sympathy.

“I’m just tired.” Rey told him. “Haven’t been sleeping right. I’m not used to deep space travel.”

“Rough.” Chewie agreed.

“Have you been to Chandrilla before?”

Chewie nodded. “Lots. Long time there.”

Chewie was older than any human by exponential degrees and still barely brushing middle aged for his kind. Rey had to wonder what it meant for him to spend a long time anywhere.

“Is it nice?”

Chewie cocked his head, chewing on the question. “Nice.” He finally settled on. “Chewbacca hates it.”

Curious. Rey looked back into the belly of the ship and decided that Finn could come and get her if he needed her.

It was hard to tell if Rey was dreaming or just feeling exposed, her presence in the Force masked by the muggy static of hyperspace and weighed down by what was now a week without proper sleep. Kylo Ren flexed his fingers, feeling the imprint of her flesh under his, soft and yielding like the fire in her eyes could never be. Her legs spread, urging him higher, the action at the forefront of his thoughts till she vanished like a child’s ghost story back into the Force. 

The heat of her skin flickered for a second longer between his fingers, a reminder that whatever these half-baked trusts might mean, they were real.

The bleep of someone requesting access to his quarters buzzed, and Rey was gone from him entirely. Kylo Ren gathered himself, standing from the desk he had strewn with star maps and imprints of the Sith articles he was using on his search for the home of the Dark side.

“What?” He snapped, bringing up the video feed to get a good look at who was disturbing him.

“Commander Pryde to see you, Supreme Leader.” The answering Stormtrooper replied.

With a grunt of assertion, Kylo Ren hit the access panel to let Pryde in. The man was a new addition to the First Order, no doubt picked from Hux’s varied collection of Empire sympathisers, but in the grand scheme of the war council, he was fairly competent. At the very least, he didn’t ask for new orders every five minutes, content to solve his own problems without direct say-so from the Supreme Leader.

“Supreme Leader!” Pryde strode into the room, bringing his heels together sharply and saluting with painful rigidity. “I bring good news from Coruscant.”

“Go on.”

“We have located the central command station used by the Former Republic to communicate with their Clone Troopers. The machine is intact and very much functional.”

Had Hux come to him with the news, Kylo Ren would have dismissed him as soon as look at him but he doubted Pryde would waste his time with something so inconsequential unless he saw scope in the discovery beyond the obvious. “And? The clone troopers are a thing of the past, Commander, as are their communication builds. First Order tech outstrips anything from the Republic.”

“Yes, Supreme Leader. But the channels it operates on are still open, and as long as the central hub is in working order it can still broadcast. The defectors, sir, that we’ve noted in the Stormtrooper ranks, have been using it to communicate with First Order enemies, including the Resistance.”

A good find indeed. Kylo Ren’s breath caught, thinking of the Resistance hiding in the mess of the Outer Reaches. When he mets Rey in the Force she never knew where she was, and despite the best efforts of the First Order they had been been unable to track them down.

Kylo Ren nodded. “Thank you, Commander Pryde. Destroy the communication hub.”

“Supreme Leader.” Pryde’s smile slipped. “Are you sure that’s wise?”

“Do I think it’s wise to prevent our army from communicating with the people who would steal them out from under us?”

“Might I suggest that we consider an alternative course of action before destroying the hub entirely?”

“Such as?”

The Force itself seemed to crackle with self-aggrandising vigour as Pryde leaned in and explained his plan.

Chandrilla wasn’t as green as Takodona, more a green-grey sludge that rolled off towards the skyline in undulating hills and scattered patches of forest. Rey brought the _Millennium Falcon_ down at the edge of a lake that was massive from the air and like an ocean on the ground. Ordinarily she would have aimed for an area with some cover but the landscape was hard to hide in and bringing the ship down in one of the scattered patches of trees was just asking for something to break and she didn’t want to spend a second longer on the planet than they had to, least of all for preventable repairs.

The access ramp spilled Rey and Chewie out into the crisp, oxygen rich atmosphere as an advance guard. Following up behind them, Finn finally made his appearance.

Leia had got it into her head that it would lend gravitas to Finn’s bearing if he dressed in the style of a Republic Senator and so far, it seemed to be working. With no idea which planet he had been born on, however, it had taken a comically large number of seamstresses the best part of two weeks to come up with something that was, as they said “vaguely Alderaanian with some Naboo flare and a touch of Coruscant grace”. Which was to say, Finn was dressed in long blue robes drizzled with complex embroidery that you could only see up close. His sleeves were wide and deep enough to hide his hands in, there was a plank down the back of the thing to keep his spine straight, and he’d had looping patterns cut into the scrub of his hair that were rapidly getting lost amongst the new growth.

“Morning!” Finn trotted past Rey, handing her a smile and clapping her on the shoulder like this was all normal and he hadn’t spent the past few hours awake and huddled in his quarters.

“Morning.” Rey was rather pleased at how cold her voice came out, but if Finn noticed he didn’t mention it. He surveyed the landscape with his hands on his hips like a farmer looking over a choice crop.

“This place seems nice. You sure we can’t stick around?”

It took Rey a second to realise that he was asking her and not continuing to confer with Rose. Nice wouldn’t be the word she would use to describe this place, but it was nice to breathe non-bottled air for a while. “It’s not safe for us to be here in the first place, Finn. Let alone stay.”

“I thought Chandrilla was still loyal to the New Republic?”

Rey shook her head. “It’s too close to Coruscant. The First Order aren’t here yet but they won’t wait much longer.”

“The Senate House in Hanna is still following New Republic protocol in theory, but there’s not much of a secretariat to hold it in place.” Rose cut in. She had fished the single speeder they had on board out of the second cargo hold and was guiding it down from the hangar. It had blown a gasket the last time they’d taken it out and all of Rose and Rey’s combined expertise hadn’t been enough to get it fully functional again, leaving it’s maximum speed at less than half of what it should have been capable of.

Finn groaned at the sight of the thing. “Seriously? Do I have to ride that.”

“Yep.” Rose steered the speeder over to him. “Come on, we should get moving.”

“My legs work just fine.”

“You sure about that?” Rose cocked an eyebrow and Finn let out a rather undignified bark of laughter.

Rey shot a withering glance at Chewie and the wookie returned it in full force.

“Seriously though.” Rose continues. “There’s plenty of marshland between here and the rendezvous point and you can’t get those fancy robes muddy. Take the speeder and save us all a lecture from Leia at the other end of this mission.”

Finn didn’t take much more persuading, hopping up onto the speeder with Rose following after, securing her hold tight around his waist. Chewie was set to go along in his capacity as the security detail, running alongside the speeder as it puttered across the hills, which left Rey behind to guard the ship.

“You don’t mind?” Finn askes, looking back at Rey standing by the _Falcon_ with two halves of a broken lightsabre at her hip and her newly minted long staff strapped to her back. She had been along on a handful of his diplomatic missions and found that they mostly involved being civil to people she wasn’t sure she could trust, something she had never been particularly good at. Smiling on queue was not part of Rey’s repertoire.

“It’s fine.” Rey assured Finn. “I could use some time to meditate anyway.”

“Ok.” Finn’s mouth twisted sheepishly, like he thought leaving her behind was in some way cruel. “Be safe.”

“You first.”

Within twenty minutes the sound of the speeder had been swallowed by the hills, replaced by the gentle whistle of the wind, the water spilling over the shingle that lined the shored of the lake. The Sky overhead was a full blue, painted with thin streaks of cloud that looked like the remnants of a recent storm.

There were no clouds on Jakku, storm or otherwise. Moisture farmers stripped the atmosphere bare of what little liquid was to be found and the population still mostly existed on water shipped in from other planets. On Chandrilla, no one ever need go thirsty.

The old Jedi texts were still stored safe on the _Falcon_ , still containing thousands of years of Jedi practice and law that Rey had barely scratched the surface of, but she would sooner burn out the backs of her eyes than have to look at them again right now. The writing and metre of the words was difficult to understand, even with her talent for language, and every time she picked them up she felt like an idiot who had completely misread everything they were saying the last time she looked.

One thing that the texts agreed on, was that meditation was key. It came in many forms, from complex thought patterns designed to mimic the ebb and flow of a moving body to methods designed to enter the user into a state of deep sensory deprivation. But the basics still served Rey fine, she learned that much from Luke even if he’d never managed to teach her anything else of value. You cross your legs and straighten your back and soon enough the universe comes to you. The space between atoms, the distance between life and death, the water on the beach, the clouds in the sky.

As easy as breathing, and as predictable. Rey ripped herself away from the Force after a matter of minutes, frustrated with herself and with the world around her that she kept doing this and it never had anything new to show her. There had to be more, the old Jedi couldn’t have spent their lives staring into the Force and realising again and again that everything existed in balance.

Rey tugged at the grass beneath her, feeling the Force shimmering over the tips of the blade and trying to decide if that was the same thing she called life in sentients and animals. Her fingers tensed, pulling up a clump of turf, just as she had done as a child, playing in the garden while her mother slaved away in her study and her father was off planet. The nurses always made such a fuss, like she had torn up the lawn in her fist, searching through the wreckage in her palm to find the best blade to press between her thumbs to blow through in place of a wood flute.

The memory wasn’t hers. Rey frowned and tried to pull back but before she could catch herself, she was tumbling forward into the Force. Tripping, a misstep that allowed her to look down and see the kink in the earth that had sent her spinning. From this angle it seemed so obvious, a link she had always been able to breach running clean across her path. To turn back from here, she only needed to cross the threshold.

“Hello, Rey.”

The voice was rich and deep, carrying a note of sadness that she liked to think was just for her and her open palm leaving him wanting on the _Supremacy_. Rey blinked and the path back the way she came vanished along with any notion that she had control over this part of her abilities.

As ever, Kylo Ren appeared as himself and nothing more, a solid outline in the golden wisps of the Force that didn’t allow either of them to see beyond the other. He sat, perhaps on the bridge of his glorious new Star Destroyer, or perhaps simply relieving his bowels.

His clothes were all in place. Rey admonished the bleating voice of her more base desires for how quickly it focused in on how much harder this was going to make everything. Kylo Ren was wrapped in his usual thick leathers and tabard, seemingly unchanged from the first time Rey laid eyes on him, save for the scar bisecting the right side of his face.

“Where are you?” He asked, eyes narrowing like he might be able to deduce her location if only he looked hard enough.

“I can’t tell you.”

“No.” Kylo Ren stood in a rush and walked over to her. Ridiculous, that they were talking through the seemingly limitless reaches of space and he still had to cross the distance between them to look her in the eye. “I felt you in the Force. You took memories. Where are you?”

Rey tried not to crane her neck back further than she had to, to meet his gaze. “It was Ben’s memory.”

His eyes flickered with a familiar rage, one that emerged whenever she mentioned his past life. Rey would have loved to hate him for it, but he shared that rage with her, the mess he made of two lives beating hard in her chest. She had never wanted to feel sorry for him, yet she had spent the best part of the last year doing so anyway.

Kylo Ren breathed deep and Rey felt the Force rush around her as he cast his mind back to whatever part of himself he had tried to kill that now harboured the memories she had never meant to intrude on. “You must be-“

“Stop.” Rey caught him before he could finish the thought, her stomach already sinking at how easy she had made this for him. Anywhere he had been, he could find her, and it was hardly protected knowledge that the Organas spent the early years of the New Republic confined to the Core.

Unable to stop herself, Rey reached up to touch his cheek, just below his eye socket where the scar dug deep into his flesh. The First Order medics were good, she’d give them that much. It would never heal completely but the fact that it was a mild aberration and not a crater in his skin was a marvel. Kylo Ren looked down at her with wide, open eyes. He was always so shocked by her touch. Rey looked back at him and saw the flicker of a boy who had held her hand by firelight while she told him all about the terrible, wonderful things she had seen in the Dark.

She needed to centre him, to bring him back to his present before he could lock her down. But once their collision started it became impossible to stop. Kylo Ren’s hand darted up Rey’s arm, holding her hand tight to his cheek as she fumbled to catch the fingers slipping over her waist.

He wanted the physical imprint of the whole thing. Touch, touch, touch and everything that would follow. It was a familiar dance, beginning with a strict disavowal that this was something they were capable of wanting and spiralling out of control so fast Rey was sure the Force itself was holding them together.

Kylo Ren opened his mouth with all of Ben Organa’s caution, trying to dislodge the great Dark something that had gotten stuck in his throat somewhere between the cradle and Ahch-to.

“Don’t think about it.” Rey murmured, leaning up and in. These connections never lasted long after they were finished with each other, so if it wasn’t over quickly at least she would have something to do with herself while she waited for the others to return.

Her breath came rushed and urgent, the soft slapping of their skin as she rose and fell above him now the only sound in the Galaxy, her hand gripping his so hard he would wake with a bruise in the cold light of day. In the Force they were undressed and open, Rey tipping back her head to expose the column of her throat and him leaning up into it. His teeth found her jugular and he didn’t bite down.

“Yes, just there.” Her voice ragged, her eyes fixed on the blank nothing of the Force above.

They could come together, or not at all. Rey was ahead of him and he wasn’t prepared for her to snap taught, dragging a groan out of him in harmony with her own. Together and not together, without so much as a contraceptive splice to entertain the possibility that this could all be real. Her hands slid up the sides of his face, holding him firm as she held his gaze. Her lips scrambled for a word, a name, something to put a stamp on this exercise and call it done. In the heat of the moment it was impossible to hate her for it.

He couldn’t hate her, much as the things she did to shape herself against his expectations of her were hateful. She had crash landed into his life and he had realised all too late that she allowed him only the broken pieces of who he had wanted her to be, still trying to establish if he could work with the flesh and blood person hidden underneath.

“B-“

Rey’s eyes opened wide and then she was gone, her weight vanished from his arms, the heat of her leaving him cold. The Force peeled back, revealing the too bright white walls of his quarters and all he wanted was to pull himself under the covers and hide from the light. It was a novelty that he had, at his end, been allowed to do this in his bed.

He looked down to find himself fully clothed, his memories of Rey tugging inelegantly at them counting for nothing here. Resourceful, quick witted, quick to anger. She would tear leather and metal from his body and when he woke it would be as if she had never touched him.

Ben Organa had seen more of the Core by age ten than most sentients did in a lifetime, but the house his parents had tried to call home was stained on the back of his mind like a bad joke. Where Leia had plotted to raise democracy from the dead and Han had picked and worried at DIY projects that remained unfinished until they packed up and left for Hosnian Prime. He had felt Rey peeking, he knew where to find her. The only question now was weather or not she would think to move before he came after her.

Snatching his Lightsabre from where he had left it on his desk, next to a stack of open books, Kylo Ren tore out of his quarters and towards the bridge. He parted the milieu of First Order staff like a knife through butter, tearing through access panels so quickly that more than one cracked under the strain he put on them.

He arrived on the bridge to see Hux standing proud at the prow of the ship. “Ah, Supreme Leader!” Hux said with a smile so forced that not even the brainwashed mass of the Stormtroopers would have mistaken it for warm. “So good of you to join us. I presume Commander Pryde has filled you in on what the rest of us have been doing all morning?”

“Ready the hyper-drive. We’re heading to Chandrilla, northern hemisphere.” Kylo Ren barely glanced at Hux, aiming his instructions directly at the navigation team.

Hux dropped the smile and settled on the scowl he wore when his authority was undermined. “Why would we be going to Chandrilla?”

“Your Supreme Leader orders it.” Kylo Ren told him, his attention still on the navigators stuck in the sunken pit that housed most of the bridge staff. It was an old Imperial design, intended to physicalise the dominance of the high-ranking officers over their staff. “You have the coordinates?”

“Yes, Supreme Leader.” The chief navigation officer was already realigning their maps with Chandrilla as their destination. From their current position on the far side of Coruscant, it would be a matter of minutes to their destination once the engine was properly primed.

It was almost possible to hear Hux’s final nerve snapping like a twig. Being told what to do was an insult he barely tolerated at the best of time, but having command of his officers taken out from under him he could not abide. In the greatest show of bravery Kylo Ren had ever seen from him, Hux reached out and grabbed his Supreme Leader by the shoulder, spinning him round so they were face to face.

Hux’s face went, if possible, all the whiter when his brain caught up to what his body had done. But he stuck the course, determined to finish what he had started. “Need I remind you that the War Council have determined that we would be better off mapping the locations of known defectors before we go after their heads?”

“Need I remind you that the War Council serves at my behest?” Kylo Ren turned to the head engineer, who was frantically trying to patch through to the engine room. “Have you primed the fuel lines?”

“Getting there, Supreme Leader.”

“Get there faster!”

“Sir!”

Hux followed him around the bridge like a shadow, bleating out a diatribe about how thoughtless this plan of action was given the depletion in their ranks. As if it mattered at all that less than one percent of the First Order’s Stormtroopers had found the guts to break through their programming and were trying to make a run for it. If he were going to make a stand, it would have been more than a year ago.

 _FN-2187_ , he thought.

An answering voice emerged through the Force to answer _Finn_.

Commander Pryde arrived on the bridge in a matter of minutes. Kylo Ren barely noticed that the man had entered the room until Hux’s nasal whine grew to such an unseemly forte that it was impossible to focus on anything else.

“-now our orders are changing in a whim and we can’t-“

“Commander Pryde.” Kylo Ren marched over, cutting Hux off before he could finish that thought. “I have assumed command of the bridge.”

The trepidation in Pryde’s eyes vanished quickly, but not fast enough for him to hide it. “As is your right, Supreme Leader. What are your orders?”

“We’re heading to Chandrilla.”

“Chandrilla?” A relieved smile broke over Pryde’s face. “Excellent news, Supreme Leader.”

“Excellent news?” Hux spluttered. “My last orders from the War Council were to wait for all active sorties to return to Coruscant where we could rally before moving on all known traitor cells at once.”

With perfectly choreographed confusion, Pryde raised an eyebrow at Hux. “You presume to challenge the will of our Supreme Leader?”

“Of course not!” Hux’s face was starting to turn scarlet. “I presume to establish whether our leadership is in agreement before acting.”

“Our leadership falls entirely to the Supreme Leader unless otherwise stated.” Pryde informed him. “And there is an entire battalion of defecting Stormtroopers on Chandrilla who’s transmissions we have intercepted in the past hour. They have made contact with the Resistance and are transmitting instructions for how other traitors might do the same on several cloaked channels we have no means of scrambling. The War Council has already revised its recommendation and now instructs that we move on Chandrilla.”

Hux froze, his arms tucked behind his back, seemingly to keep himself from hitting Pryde on reflex. That would be entertaining, to say the least. Pryde was a former Imperial paratrooper and Hux had never done a day of manual labour in his life.

Pryde moved past him to assume his position as head of the bridge. “Are we ready to move to hyper space?”

“Almost.”

“Engineering is ready.”

“Nav comm is coming online.”

“Wait!” Kylo Ren held up a hand. “When we arrive at Chandrilla, I will descend to the planet alone.”

Pryde’s mouth drooped ever so slightly. “We have two squadrons already primed to make planetfall, Supreme Leader. There is no need for you to make the descent yourself.”

“There is more on Chandrilla than rogue Stormtroopers. I will take no longer than two hours on the ground to complete my business and in doing so I will turn the ride of the war.”

Pryde looked at him with focused ardour. “The Force will free me, Supreme Leader.”

The Force freed no one. It grabbed it’s acolytes by the scruff of the neck and never let go. Kylo Ren nodded. “Ready my ship.”

An hour with a wrench and a particularly stubborn blocked fuel pipe and Rey’s irritation at herself had almost managed to dissipate. The Force had a horrible habit of convincing her that all her worst ideas were worth acting on. It was like plunging into a frozen lake whilst drunk and grabbing a rancor tail to haul herself out – certainly an option but not one she would like to make in her right mind.

The first time it had happened, she hadn’t even been alone. After the battle of Crait, her seat in the _Falcon’s_ cockpit had become her permanent residence for more than a month while the Resistance sought a safe harbour to rest in. The patience required to live in such close proximity to so many people for so long was draining, and despite her best intent to shut him out, Rey had found her link with Kylo Ren to be the only place she could find a modicum of peace. So she had used it, and sat sulking in the corner while he watched her with all the wariness of a lion terrified of a mouse.

But maintaining that anger was as pointless as it was exhausting. Try as they might, they couldn’t hurt each other through the Force. The next thing Rey knew she was snapping awake half a foot away from Poe Dameron in the co-pilot seat, shocked to find herself fully clothed. Then it happened again, and again, and when the pulled apart it all felt so unreal that try as she might, she couldn’t feel guilty about it.

With a final crunch, the fuel pipe clunked back online, restoring the essential function of being able to flush the toilet more than once every five minutes. At the very least, Rose would thank her for her efforts. The broken pipe had been at the bottom of her to do list for the past week.

The official purpose of their mission was to destabilise the First Order as far as possible by providing any rebel Stormtroopers with the means to escape their former captors and to spread the word of what they were doing in the hope of encouraging more defections. The truth of the matter was that the Resistance was still pathetically under-manned. Leia’s pockets ran deep enough that they were never short on supplies, but that meant little when they didn’t have the people to utilise the pair of X-Wings they had. The theory was that they could find the recruits they needed in the flurry of people abandoning the First Order, though so far the Stormtroopers they had encountered were more interested in getting as far away from their old masters as possible as taking up arms for the other side.

Rey would be lying if she said she didn’t understand their logic.

Emerging back out into the temperate afternoon, Rey’s eye was caught by a glimmer high above the clouds. A ship entering the atmosphere, most likely. Something small and fast. She watched it descend, barrelling towards the lake below with seemingly little care for what would happen if it hit the surface.

Dread coiled in Rey’s gut as the ship started to change course, it’s outline showing up clear and black against the dull sky. She rushed back to the cockpit to fire up the radio wave communicator bolt she had installed in the hope of granting this mission a more private communication channel to use on planet. “Finn, Rose, Chewie, come in!” The line crackled and burbled and stayed resolutely dead.

Out of the window, the black dot had haven on the distinctive shape and motion of a TIE Whisper, within minutes the _Falcon_ would be in firing range. The Force pulsed over her shoulders, cloying and unwelcome and she shivered against it, trying to shake the sensation of someone peering behind her ears for the secrets she kept carefully out of reach.

_Found you._

Slamming down her mental defenses, Rey fired up the engine and had the ship off the ground before she had even finished the start up sequence. She could only hope that when she caught up to the others, the Stormtroopers would had stuck to their change of heart.

The shapes of the great Chandrillan lakes were burned deep into the memory of every child who grew up here. They were thin, deep creatures that snaked across most of the planet’s western hemisphere, each one housing more water than existed on most terrestrial planets and together contained multitudes that could have flooded Jakku.

Coming in over the northern reach of the Talmouth region, past the far western arm of Lake Tal, it was hard to say whether Kylo Ren felt or saw Rey first. The rush of her adrenaline hit him hard, making it hard to think over the roaring of his heart in his ears.

It didn’t take her long to get the _Millennium Falcon_ into the air, and despite his best attempts to optimise the engine outputs on the _Silencer_ , with the ancient ship having completed it’s awkward hobble off the ground it was all he could do to stay on her tail. He took off after her, trying to forget that he knew the sound of the clutch screaming when she banked, the rumble of the secondary engine when she tried to slow down below sound speed. At first he worried that she would be foolish enough to make this easy for him, but then she swerved violently upwards and he almost lost her so quickly he had to turn to face into the sun to stay on course. By the time he had course corrected the _Falcon_ was dipping past him in the opposite direction.

Kylo Ren smiled, Rey smiled back at him with the same mouth. She slowed; the bait so obvious that he couldn’t resist catching up to her just to see how easily she blew him away in the aftermath. Her lack of technical skill made her unpredictable, her creativity made her a joyful opponent to face.

“Are you going to shoot that ship down or are you training for the kriffing opera?” Hux snapped, his voice all the more whiny and unpleasant through the comm link back to the _Finaliser_. Kylo Ren hit the button to mute the admiral.

Up ahead, the _Millenium Falcon_ stuttered in the air, and nothing about the motion looked intentional. Kylo Ren watched with dismay as the fuel light on the rear end dimmed as the ship scrambled for the last few vapours. Rey’s panic was obvious but she managed to get the nose of the ship pointed down, aiming towards a loose collection of farms a few miles to the north.

He could have caught her without effort. Kylo Ren slowed the _Silencer_ to what passed for a crawl on a TIE fighter and followed her all the way down to the fields below.

The dashboard of the cockpit was lit up like Life Day on Kashyyyk and every siren on board seemed to be clamouring for Rey’s attention. Rey hammered on the control pad, trying to pull up the empty fuel lines and get the stupid thing to shut up as she attempted one of the least elegant landings she was ever likely to put herself through. It she was lucky, she wouldn’t have to call her next manoeuvre a crash. The landing stirrups came up under the ship without complaint, then the engine wound down from essential functions to almost nothing and Rey worried that she still wasn’t low enough to not split the ship in two as soon as it hit the ground.

By the time the _Falcon_ came to a halt, it had demolished three fields of corn. Rey scrambled off the ship, grabbing her tracking band on the way to keep up with Finn. She was unsurprised to see a pair of farmhands approaching her cautiously from the cluster of farmhouses beyond. The scream of Kylo Ren’s TIE Whisper coming in to land just the other side of the row of trees that separated the farmland from the rest of the Chandrillan planes moved her towards them faster than they dared approach her.

“What are you playing at?” The taller of the two farmhands barked as Rey caught up to them. Human, male, blonde, moving with the sort of hulking purpose that could only be picked up by men who hauled loads heavier than themselves for a living. “Those were essential crops. You better be ready to pay for us to ship in corn from the other side of Hanna.”

“You need to get out of here.” Rey told him, trying to duck away and keep moving but unprepared for how quickly he could move. He cut her off and brought her to a halt.

“This is my land; I don’t need to go anywhere.”

“The First Order is on their way; it isn’t safe here.”

“If you don’t move your kriffing ship and pay for the damage to my crops-“

“Move!” Rey barked, letting the Force slip into her words like she had with the Stormtrooper back on the _Finaliser_.

The farmhand froze, his eyes still burning with righteous fury. He stared Rey down for so long that she was sure it must have failed, before suddenly turning on his heel and heading out to the North East, on a trajectory that promised to bypass the settlement completely.

Rey turned back to the other farmhand, who was staring after his friend in confusion. “What did you do to him?”

Glancing up ahead, Rey saw more faces emerging around the corners of the squat little farmhouses. She didn’t have time to explain this all over. “Where’s he headed?”

“There’s a bunker out that way.” The man stared at her nervously, his hands wringing as he tried to work out how much truth he owed her. “Dates back to the Clone Wars, but it’s sturdy.”

“That’s where you’ve got to get to.”

“But why?”

“The First Order are coming.”

Nodding like he believed her but didn’t want to, the man cast his eyes around like some sort of solution to his predicament might pop up out of the Earth and save him this whole conversation. His eyeline paused somewhere over Rey’s shoulder, his face going white.

Rey looked back and saw exactly what he saw. A figure dressed in black, emerging out of the treeline with a blazing red lightsabre at his side.

The man’s hands stopped moving. “We have to go.”

Rey didn’t stop to make sure that the evacuation came to completion, trusting that if Kylo Ren was here, he would come after her rather than pausing to decimate a group of people who were busy getting out of his way. She followed the route laid out by her tracking beacon, passing through the farmhouses and soon found herself on the road to the larger settlement to which they were attached, a good half a mile away and sat on the top of the next wave of hills.

The town was small and washed out in blue, the little rounded spires that indicated Chandrillan culture in all the children’s holovids present on every roof. Rey came in via the diminutive landing pad, which housed a pair of family sized ships and a loose collection of speeders. Her feet barely hit the cobbled streets before she was noticed by the locals.

“You’re a long way from Hanna.” A woman shaking a rug out on her front porch called out.

Rey looked at her, seeing greying hair and worn skin. The history of this place. “I’m sorry.”

“What are you apologising to me for?”

“The First Order is coming.”

“The First Order?” The old woman squinted at the skies, then turned back to shout into the belly of the house. “Oi, Mako. Come take a look out here. D’you see the First Order?”

A much younger woman materialised by her mother in the doorway of the house. She marched up to Rey, her shoulders tense. “You’re with the First Order?”

“No! The First Order are coming. I’m with the Resistance.”

“You’re with Finn?” Mako raised an eyebrow.

“Yes!” Rey smiled despite herself. “Is he here?”

“Course he’s here, why are you here?”

“I got into a fight with a TIE pilot and had to make a crash landing.”

Mako shook her head, kissing her teeth at Rey. “And you thought you’d bring them right to our door, did you?”

Looking around at the sleepy streets, the blue walls and golden-brown doors of the town, Rey’s stomach plummeted. She could have gone anywhere, could have led Kylo Ren away. 

“Those nice boys staying over at Sandy’s are from the First Order, aren’t they?” Mako’s mum asked.

“Yeah.” Mako replied. “Yeah mum, they are. And they’ll be going right back there real soon.” She looked at Rey with a poisonous sort of loathing. “I hope you’re happy.”

“You need to evacuate the town.” Rey urged her as Mako started up the street at a loose jog.”

“No shit!”

Rey watched her go, unsure if she was supposed to follow. It didn’t take long for a familiar figure to replace Mako at the other end of the street, however. Decked out in midnight blue robes that billowed around him as he walked, it took Finn a moment to realise what he was looking at. “Rey! What are you doing here, you should be back at the _Falcon_.”

If she spoke, she would cry. Out of gas and out of options, when the First Order realised exactly what they were after on Chandrilla, they would have a whole lot more than just Kylo Ren to deal with.

Whoever had decided to launch further troops from the _Finaliser_ , Commander Pryde had sunk in Kylo Ren’s estimations by allowing it to happen. A Y-Wing and two standard TIE fighters approached overhead, still minutes away but the silence of the landscape carrying the rumble and shrieks of their engines.

Once he got to Rey, he would have given Hux and Pryde free reign to do whatever they needed to do with the treacherous contingency seeking refuge on this planet and now he would have to fight his own troops to do what he came here to do. He had no plan, but his instinct kept urging him towards the girl, like the moments they spent together in the Force could make up for a lifetime of loneliness.

She was essential, she had to be made to understand. No one who understood could turn down the power he was offering her.

Kylo Ren breathed deep as he trudged through the fields, smelling the soil kicked up by his boots. He skirted around the collapsed body of the _Millennium Falcon_ and proceeded past the deserted houses. The magnetic tug of Rey’s presence pulled him forward, towards the town hunkered on the next hill over. He followed after her, craving the cool heel of her hand against the back of his neck and the tug of her legs around his hips.

The air shifted, calling him all the more urgently. Kylo Ren paused, frowning. This was not the time. But the answering tug on the other end of his and Rey’s connection knocked his legs out from under him and he fell straight through the waking world to the thick Dark nothing beyond.

Up ahead, the path vanished into the trees. Rey rounded the bend before Ben could get his bearings and he stumbled under the weight of his cape and armour as he tried to take off after her. Birds shrieked at him as he past, their alarm calls signalling to the forest that a predator was on the move.

He tasted salt on the air. Close to the ocean, close to a cliff. He had to find Rey, to catch her before she fell.

Half formed creatures moved through the trees around him, their forms disfigured by the ever-changing lines of the trunks that marked his path. Every time Ben tried to look directly at them, they would fade to nothing, vanishing back into the green.

Shedding the outer layers of his carapace, like a beetle grown to big for it’s body, Ben moved gracelessly along the path. There was a name, a person he had fashioned for himself as a mask, but that man was lost here. He'd buried it in the rich loam of the woods. He didn’t need to mourn it.

“Ben!” Rey’s voice was a stream babbling through the undergrowth. They should stop and fill their water skins before they continued. The ocean was just up ahead, the cliff was coming.

The creatures beyond the trees mocked him in unfamiliar languages. Who did he think he was, ambling along like an injured colt, following her, heading for the ocean?

The ocean.

The ocean and the island.

When they reached the ocean, they would no longer be in the woods.

When they reached the ocean, they would deal with the cliff.

Lighter now, but still so unsure in this body that had apparently been his from the day he was born, Ben tried to hold his footing as he moved after Rey, catching flashes of her up ahead. Her hair down, her eyes bright, her robes darker than when he last saw her.

Robes she made for herself out of fabric she picked on purpose. No more scavenging for scraps for her, she’d get a full meal every night. He’d see to it.

The cliff appeared out of nowhere. The ocean lapping hungrily at the edge of the land a hundred feet below, before falling back to reveal jagged spikes of rock littering the water.

“Where’s Rey?”

A shrieking chorus of laughter scattered through the forest at his back. Ben turned and finally saw the shape of his tormentors, white and shining, clear as day. Row upon row of Stormtroopers staring him down.

He had never cared much about Stormtroopers, even when he was young and his parents would show him pictures taken under the Empire, expecting him to understand and share in their terror at the identical, inhuman masks.

“Here, Ben.” Rey appeared, hovering in the air above, wielding a staff that looked like it had been pieced together from the broken remains of half a dozen blasters.

Ben’s body was ungainly and awkward under his ministrations, helpless without a weapon to hand. Rey fell to earth, socking him in the stomach with the sharp end of her staff so hard that he stumbled backwards, bent double, trying to catch his breath.

From there she didn’t need to do a damn thing. His fate was sealed. She moved anyway, reaching out to caress his cheek as he began to fall. Ben wanted her here, wanted her now, wanted the Stormtroopers to watch. But he was falling, back, back, till her fingers couldn’t reach him any longer and the only thing he knew for certain was that he would die with salt in his lungs.

Kylo Ren opened his eyes in the central square of an empty town on an unfamiliar planet. Rey was looking back at him, alone and scared.

And he wanted her, and to have her would be a weakness.

“What did you do?” He hissed.

Rey’s answering sigh came close to apology.

Rey had been wary of manipulating the bond between the two of them like this for as long as she had considered it a possibility. Once she revealed the full scope of what the Force could conjure between them she would be as weak and open to it as Kylo Ren, but watching Mako trying to gather the Stormtroopers hidden in basements across this scrappy little town without causing a panic, looking back over her shoulder towards the approaching First Order ships descending from the atmosphere, Rey knew she would have to do everything in her power to make things right if she ever wanted to trust herself to look Finn in the eyes again.

So, she had taken a deep breath and plunged into the heart of the Force, dragging Kylo Ren with her. She needn’t have worried, he was uncomfortable in his skin down here, unable to lie to himself and paying for all the years he had spent doing just that. Down below the levels of the Force that he could control, Kylo Ren vanished altogether.

Seeing him return to the real world, bigger and bolder than the strange approximation of the man he might have been if he had allowed himself to be, Rey was afraid she had misjudged him entirely. She spread her legs into an open stance, ready to fight him when he came for her.

Fight him with what? The staff the Resistance had sourced for her was stronger and more supple than the one she had built for herself on Jakku but it was nowhere near enough to go up against a lightsabre.

Nervous and trying disguise her intentions, less Kylo Ren should track her movements, Rey sent out a searching flicker through the Force. The Stormtroopers had put a stress on the resources of this tiny little town but the locals believed that Hanna was now a First Order city in all but name and after talking to the defectors and finding them no less human than any other sentients, the townsfolk had been loathe to turn them in. Still, the renegade Stormtroopers had insisted on leaving in a different direction to the evacuating locals, very much aware that they had little chance of escaping their former masters in the thick of it.

So the townsfolk had headed out towards the same bunker that the farmers had fled towards, and the Stormtroopers had headed west with Mako and Finn in tow while Chewie and Rose took the long way round and a barrel of engine fuel to get the _Falcon_ back in the air. All Rey had to do was stall for time, till the Stormtroopers could hide themselves properly and Rose could get their transport back in the air.

“Ben…” Rey hated how her voice shook.

But Ben was gone, and in his place stood a hulking black monster that defied her attempts to name him. Kylo Ren leapt after Rey, his lightsabre bursting into life as he reached out with the Force to try and pin her down.

Rey could see his signature in the Force, the patterns he used to enact his will upon the world. From there it was easy enough to slip under his grip and push onwards, shuddering and altering herself every time he tried to bring the Force down upon her. It was like running from her fellow scavengers through the belly of a Star Destroyer. You had to keep moving, keep your head low to save your neck and trust that the format of one ship would transpose to another. But more often than not, you survived.

Meeting him head on would have been nothing short of a waste of time. Rey was faster than him and better able to think on her feet. The town had all of three streets to work with but that wasn’t nothing, so when Rey fell back beyond the first row of houses, she stuck to what she knew best and started to climb. She shimmied up to the roof of one of the squat, round roofed houses just as Kylo Ren’s lightsabre cut through the drain she had used to make the climb.

He would look ridiculous trying to follow her up here, and the roof probably couldn’t take his weight. Rey kicked at the tiles below her feet as she ran, satisfied by the crash as each one hit the ground. The houses were packed fairly close together, so despite being small, the length of one rooftop gave her just enough time to build up the momentum to jump to the next one. She felt Kylo Ren’s hands reaching up to her, trying to freeze her in place, but even when he felt like he had got a good grip on her she shrugged him off like it was nothing.

As if he might ever be able to control her from the inside out. Ben knew Rey in ways Kylo Ren couldn’t imagine. It wasn’t her fault that one assumed that her proximity to the other made her weak to both.

It didn’t take long for Rey to run out of places to run. The town was too small to allow her to keep moving forever. She reached the outer edge of the settlement and looked down at the dull grass of the turf meeting the edge of the cobbles and swore she could smell salt.

Kylo Ren swung round till he filled her field of vision, his teeth clenched like they did in the heat of battle only here he had no battle to fight. His lightsabre was still lit at his side, hanging limp and useless in his closed fist, rendered little more than set dressing with nothing to use it against. He couldn’t grab her by the force, and for all his insistence that he belonged in whole to the Dark, he’d never really wanted to hurt her.

If Rey were in his position, she would use the Force to tear down the house on which she stood. As soon as she had the idea, she wished she hadn’t. She wasn’t ready for how quickly the structure would crumble beneath her feet, the bricks and tiles falling away in one fell swoop and by the time she hit the ground, the fall far enough to leave a bruise but her bones unbroken, everything had been stacked into three neat piles, waiting for someone to come along and build the house all over again.

Looking up, Rey found Kylo Ren looming over her and she understood now why he had used the mask when they first met. Without it, she could see the way his bottom lip wobbled when he was angry, the fire in his eyes that betrayed how much he cared. He moved as if to reach down and touch her, but his nerve failed him miles short of his mark. A wave of apprehension leaked out of him, unable to use the Force and unwilling to use his physical strength to best her. He had handed her the upper hand by default.

“What now?” Rey hissed, scrambling to her feet.

His mouth flapped open, his shoulders hunched.

Rey stumbled to her feet. “The Stormtroopers are gone, so are the townsfolk. You’ve lost. The First Order have lost.”

Kylo Ren’s eyes flicked skyward, searching for his allies. The scream of a TIE fighter drifted through the still afternoon air, but it was far off and preoccupied.

“I just-“

“What?”

“I wanted to see you.”

The naked honesty provoked a wave of pity that Rey crushed as soon as she felt. How lonely, to tell yourself you are the ruler of all things but still scramble for the meagre attentions of a scavenger. Rey could see him then, as clearly as she had in Snoke’s throne room. Once upon a time there was a boy, and he was still desperately trying to become a man.

“Ben.” Rey stepped forward, reaching out to him. She found the rough material of his doublet, leading up to the soft skin of his neck and the rough patched on his cheek where despite his best efforts the stubble was breaking through. Perhaps here it could be like in the force, the all encompassing need to be close to each other, to feel unity in a space destined just for the two of them.

Out of nowhere, a TIE fighter appeared in the sky above them, firing off a bolt that demolished three buildings on the far side of the town in one go.

The First Order didn’t need to be here with their guns blazing and their eyes fixed firmly on dominating the Galaxy. What did a handful of Stormtroopers matter in the grand scheme of things? In her more forgiving moments, Rey wondered why Kylo Ren even bothered with them, he hardly seemed like the type to concern himself with politics and dog fights when he could be falling even further into the black heart of the force.

“If you just wanted to see me, they wouldn’t be here.” Rey told him. She didn’t wait for him to respond before she ran.

She may have been faster than him, but he was a persistence hunter. Patience was the wrong word for what made him such a brilliant predator, he’d fly off the handle as soon as he didn’t get his way, but he wouldn’t stop pursuing his target till he had it under his thumb. Rey ran through what was left of the town, but every time she thought she had found somewhere to hide, the walls that sheltered her would fall apart and inwards, reverting back to a stack of materials that could one day be a building but for now was nothing at all.

Nowhere to go, nowhere to run, no end in sight. _Let me go!_ Rey called out to him. _It’s not like there’s anything else you can do with me._

Kylo Ren paused, and in the space he left behind Rey heard the splutter of an approaching speeder. She looked out across the hills and saw a lone figure zipping back towards town. It was hardly surprising, when she reached out to try to identify the rider, that Finn’s signature came roaring back at her, bold and bright.

Kylo Ren wouldn’t do anything to hurt her, but he wasn’t so discerning when it came to her friends. Quick as she was able, Rey got to her feet and started sprinting towards Finn. When the cobbles under her feet turned to grass, she let out a whoop of joy. She was exposed out here, but she felt free, the dark sulk of Kylo Ren’s presence sloughing off her with every step she took.

“Finn!” Rey caught up to him, breathless, half a mile outside of town. “You came back.”

“I’ll always come back for you.” Finn paused, holding out a hand for her to take as he scanned her face. “Are you alright?”

Rey nodded, hauling herself up onto the back of the speeder. “We need to get out of here.”

“Don’t need to tell me twice.” Finn’s jaw set firm as he hit the accelerator. Rey grabbed hold of him to keep from flying off the speeder as it took off.

She looked from the handlebars to the worn dials on the dash, surprised that she recognised them from the worn down speeder Rose had dragged off the _Falcon_ that morning. “Who fixed up this hunk of junk?”

“Jelly, one of the Stormtroopers. Turns out the First Order engineering programme is pretty efficient. I think Rose is a little sore at having been shown up so badly.” Finn’s voice was steely and severe, but a slight smile tipped up the corners of his mouth.

A wave of guilt rushed through Rey, that she had ever dared to presume that Rose and Finn being close to one another could have been anything but good for the both of them. She wrapped her arms around Finn’s waist and squeezed him tight by way of an apology that she knew she would never have the guts to articulate in its entirety.

“Thanks for looking out for me, even when I’m being an idiot.”

“Hey, what are friends for?”

Rey smiled into his shoulder “Where are we headed?”

Finn took one hand off the controls to point to a copse of trees some miles ahead. “The Stormtroopers are hiding out there, we’re gonna go join them till Rose and Chewie can come get us.”

Bad idea. Rey shook her head. “No! If we do that, we’ll lead the First Order right to them. Kylo Ren saw me leaving with you, he’ll be able to track us easily.”

“I get it, the robes were a bad idea.” Finn grumbled, even if that wasn’t what Rey had meant. When she reached out with the Force, she could still feel Kylo Ren standing exactly where she had left him, clueless and angry in the middle of what was once a town, with his lightsabre lit and useless.

“We should head south for a while.” Rey suggested. “Throw them off the scent.”

“If we do that, we’re gonna be dodging TIE fire.” Finn had barely gotten the words out before a pair of TIE fighters shrieked low overhead. The speeder swerved violently to the right as Finn tried to get out of their way, then he twitched the accelerator and found a final burst of speed out of nowhere.

The scream of the TIE fighters faded, but Rey felt cold dread trickling down her spine all the same, like they had simply exchanged one problem for another. She looked back over her shoulder to follow their movements and her heart sank. “Finn!”

“What?” Finn didn’t look up, his head down as he tried to maintain their course at such a high speed.

By the time Rey spoke again, it was already too late.

“Ren! Ren, for kriff’s sake will you pick up the bloody comm?” Hux’s voice echoed, tinny and nasal through the receiver that had, up till now, been turned off.

“Ren here.” Kylo Ren snapped as he fished the thing from his pocket, forgetting that Hux ought to be reprimanded for talking to his Supreme Leader like a misbehaving infant.

“Do you have the girl?”

“No.”

“Stars above, Ren!”

He could still feel her, moving across the planet like a particularly malignant parasite that refused to let him be. Kylo Ren growled, his fingers wrapping fight around the receiver and it was only when Hux let out an undignified choke from the other end that he realised what he was doing.

“Oh.” Kylo Ren relaxed his grip on the receiver and felt his finger pulling away from Hux’s throat. 

“My…apologies…Supreme Leader.” Hux rasped out. “What are you orders?”

His orders. He hadn’t thought that far ahead. He had come for Rey and had no way of leaving with her, leaving him floundering for anything resembling a plan of action.

Rey though, had come here for the Stormtroopers, and it was hardly difficult to work out where they were hiding. The signature of a broken mind, unbroken of it’s own accord, was a distinctive one, and a significant ripple had gathered in the Force not too far from here. Kylo Ren looked west, over the tops of the stacks of bricks and mortar that an hour ago had been a living, breathing piece of the land. A meagre crop of trees had scattered itself over one of the hills in the distance, calling out to him while Rey and the Stormtrooper from Jakku who was no longer a Stormtrooper headed towards it.

As if Hux were watching him where he stood, Kylo Ren pointed towards the trees. “Strike there, five miles west of my position. That's where the defecting troops are stationed.”

He cut the connection before he could hear Hux give the order, but it was a matter of seconds before the circling TIE fighters fell into formation overhead and sped out towards their target. A smattering of turret fire and it was over, and where a forest had once been there was only a pile of ash. Kylo Ren stood firm, watching Rey zip away north, trying to escape the TIE fire. He waited until ever life signature amongst the trees had been stamped out, then he turned and started the trek back to the _Silencer_.

The speeder hung in the air, immobile with Finn’s foot holding down the break. Neither he nor Rey said a word as they watched the TIE fighters pull away.

She had never thought much of it before, but Rey supposed that Unkar Plutt couldn’t have been the only person inconvenienced or dead by the TIE fighters that streaked through Niima Outpost when she and Finn had run from the First Order, BB8 in tow.

Finn’s shoulders shook, but his voice was steady. “D’you think-“

“I felt them go.” Rey whispered. White, shining helmets, concealing people ready to begin a new life. She had thought of them as nothing more than assets for the Resistance and nuisances that would clutter up the _Falcon_ on the trip back to base. “I’m sorry.”

“It’s not your fault, Rey.”

“I shouldn’t have run. I should have kept Kylo Ren distracted, then he wouldn’t-“

“It’s not your fault.” Finn twisted in his seat, meeting Rey’s eye. “Please, Rey. You didn’t know.”

 _But I could have done_ , she thought to herself _. I could have felt him coming. I could have held him back_.

 _No, you couldn’t_. Kylo Ren answered her.

Rey had half a mind to snap her staff in two.

“The town has been raised to the ground and the traitors are dead. It would have been nice to leave some survivors to pass on the story as a warning to future defectors, but we can’t have everything. All in all, a successful mission.” Pryde beamed over his maps of Chandrilla, rendered in blue light over the high table in the war room.

Kylo Ren shook his head. “The villagers were hiding to the East. There are survivors.”

“Hah!” Pryde leaned back in his chair, spreading his hands wide. “Well then, maybe we can have everything.”

Even Hux was less testy than usual, though he did make a point of identifying the speck of the _Millennium Falcon_ leaving the planet some two hours after the Stormtroopers had been eliminated. “It would have been good to cut down the Resistance element before we pulled back, though.”

“That wasn’t the mission.” Kylo Ren told him.

“Exactly, supreme Leader! Let them run off home and tell their friends what the First Order can do with a pair of TIE fighters. Let’s see how cocky they are now with their half a dozen ships.” Prude purred.

Pryde and Hux went back and forth each each other, trying to work out exactly how they wanted to report this to the rest of the War Council at the next meeting. Hux focused in on minor flaws in the mission that he claimed could be used as ‘learning opportunities’. Pryde countered with the marvellous ideological victory that he believed had been struck that day, apparently unaware that a Force sensitive had been able to escape back to her friends in the Resistance.

_Your faith in your friends…_

The ghost of a whisper dripped, almost unnoticed, down Kylo Ren’s spine. The voice not Rey’s and not Snoke’s. he jerked upright, scowling over his shoulder like he might be able to see the culprit standing right behind him.

“Supreme Leader?” Hux asked with a condescending raise of an eyebrow.

Kylo Ren righted himself and waved Hux down. “I have to return to my quarters.”

“I’m sure you are exhausted from your efforts today, but your presence on the bridge would do wonders for the crew’s morale.”

“I’ll be in my quarters if you need me.” Kylo Ren ignored him, turning to leave the War Room in a hurry, his shoulders pulled up to try and cover his ears. It was probably just a trick of his imagination, a layover from having Snoke in his head for thirty years. He collapsed back into his quarters, slamming the access panel closed and deadlocking it for the next four hours.

Kylo Ren paused, leaning heavily against the wall. He had been here not ten hours ago, he had been at work. The desk tucked into the alcove next to his bed called out to him, books still open to the pages he had been scanning over his morning kaf.

There seemed little else to do but reboot his holonet connection and push onwards.

“All of them?” Rose’s hand had been glued to Finn’s since they’d left Chandrilla but the more she talked the tighter they seemed to wind. “Are you sure?”

Finn looked to Rey, like her answer might change this time. Rey nodded, carefully not quite looking at either of them.

“What about the villagers?”

Rey shrugged. “Safe, as far as I can tell. Though they don’t have much to go back to. We weren’t a particularly convincing advertisement for the Resistance.”

Chewie grunted mournfully in ascent, and outside the portholes the blue freneticism of hyperspace zipped by. They had more than a month left before their mission brief ran out and having stopped to refuel on one of Corellia’s less conspicuous moons they were well equipped to see it through to the end. At the very least they would have something to do with themselves. In the time it had taken them to stop on Chandrilla, six new signals had appeared in the Mid-Rim, all requests for aid from defecting Stormtroopers. The First Order’s grip was slipping, fractionally, but it was there.

It had been more than twenty-five hours since Rey got anything approaching decent sleep. She didn’t protest when Chewie answered her next yawn by insisting that she make her way to bed. The single bunks on the _Millennium Falcon_ were small and functional, kitted out with mattresses that had most likely been dug out of a trash compactor and were in dire need of replacing. Rey fell into the mess of blankets she slept under without bothering to change, aware that she was long overdue an appointment with a refresher. Such luxury would have to wait until they could refill the water tank beyond what they needed to cool the engine and keep themselves from going thirsty.

Rey curled up tight, rolling into the frigid metal wall of the bunk room. Some part of her still trying to preserve heat through the Jakku night. Before sleep took her, she looked up at the wall and could almost believe that it was covered in tiny checkmarks, mapping the days she had spent on this ship. Then her eyes closed, and the marks were gone, packed away with all the other bad dreams she never talked about.

The Force was black. The Force was white. The Force was all things and incomprehensible.

“You don’t care about that.” Ben murmured. He was so close, his breath disturbing her hair as he leaned into her.

“I do.” Rey spat. She cared for Finn’s sake, and for the sake of the Resistance. They had to stop the First Order, after all. “I care.”

“It’s ok. You don’t have to.”

“I care.”

“Ok.”

He was everywhere and nothing. Ben’s heartbeat underneath her hand, tethering her to this point in time lest she take flight and vanish into the Force completely.

“You’re nothing.” He smiled into the shell of her ear. “But not to me.”

In his eyes, Rey saw the island. Not Ahch-To, somewhere greener. She fell into that fantasy, the world beyond the deep blanket of endless everything the Force build around them, and trusted that she could wait till the morning to figure out how to look Finn in the eye.


End file.
